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Comment by eyeJam | Hacker News Reader

100% with you on this point. I'm pretty extroverted (whatever the hell that even means) and I can't stand open plan offices. When I get home from a workday in an open-plan I'm much more stressed and mentally exhausted. Whereas if I'm working in peace and quiet all day in a mini-partition in the bullpen I come home feeling refreshed and satisfied with my workday.

The extra noise and distractions in an open-plan force me to use more willpower to focus and end up depleting my mental energy. After complaining to my boss many times I eventually started wearing earmuffs and turned my workstation towards the corner so that I couldn't see people. Of course being the control-freak psychopath that he was he mocked me in front of everyone else for wearing earmuffs and when that didn't work he started calling me into his office every 5 minutes and would get angry at me if I didn't hear him calling. Wow what a shitty boss and so glad I got out of there.

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Are you sure you are extraverted?

You say,

> I'm pretty extroverted (whatever the hell that means)

But then you also say

> The extra noise and distractions in an open-plan force me to use more willpower to focus and end up depleting my mental energy.

And that's pretty close to the definition of introversion.

You know introversion / extraversion is not about being shy vs outgoing. That is a very common misconception.

Introversion means that social interactions and situations lacking privacy cause you to become tired and experience mental energy drain.

You might love hanging out with friends and being around people, it just makes you tired. Extraverts on the other hand experience an energy boost from social situations, even if they don't prefer being in some specific social situation (e.g. an extravert may hate going to work, but still feel that "buzz of activity" just from being around everyone).

It's about how your cognitive fatigue is triggered: is your fatigue triggered by social situations, or is your fatigue lessened by those situations.

The effect you describe about the fatigue your open plan space causes for you makes me strongly suspect you're much closer to the introvert side of the spectrum than you believe.

Well i'm extroverted around people. I get a huge burst of energy. I get too excited and can't focus. I just want to keep talking to people and moving around. When it's time to dig into a rats nest of JS code I need serenity and quiet. The reason I don't really buy the whole introvert/extrovert thing is that its way too broad of a distinction and presents this binary of personalities when it's really more of a continuum. I think you just made my point.

Most of the research on the introversion / extraversion workplace effects very strongly focuses on the spectrum aspect, and decidedly eschews the binarism that has held us back from correctly accommodating human beings at work.

I think all this introversion/extroversion stuff is BS pop psychology. You might as well read someone's horoscope.

I don't mind interaction with coworker's if that's part of my job, but if my job is to work on delicate computer code, you better not fucking interrupt me. Anyone who doesn't understand this probably hasn't worked on coworker's tricky legacy code. I don't feel particularly drained in either scenario beyond the normal mental fatigue of concentrating hard or putting up with people I don't like.

What I really hate is that when the guy next to me in an open plan is stressed out it makes me stressed out too. Which is unfortunate because my current desk mate is pretty tightly wound. (More so than me, anyway). That's not introversion or extroversion that's empathy.

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